Skip to main content
Snack

To Salt Almonds

Roasted almonds tossed with butter or olive oil and salted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,245 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

To Salt Almonds

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately warm oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cover the shelled almonds with boiling water and let stand for 2-3 minutes.

  2. Drain and place in cold water; rub off the skins.

  3. Dry the almonds with a towel and spread them on a pie pan.

Roast and season

  1. Add the butter or olive oil and stir well.

  2. Place in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden brown.

  3. Remove from the oven, stir, and quickly sprinkle with salt.

  4. Allow to cool before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Form the crunchy, nutty body of the snack once roasted.
Butter or olive oil
Coats the almonds so they brown evenly and take on a rich flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the surface; added right after baking so it sticks to the hot, oiled nuts.

The step that matters

Sprinkle the salt quickly after baking. Hot, oiled almonds hold salt best right out of the oven. Once they cool, the oil sets and the salt falls off, leaving the seasoning uneven.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

FrittersFritters56 recipesCrisp CrackersCrisp Crackers7 recipes